I guess I fear I’m losing bits of me, that clung to you,
as your memory slowly washes away.

I can barely remember what it was like to be in love with you. I close my eyes, the place where you lived.–behind my eyelids–in flashes of light and

abstracted, muted,
fleeting motion.

Those flowers whose smell would instantaneously render me immobile,

taking me back to you, your blushing laughter, the tactility of
your lips-sometimes I can still feel them.
the breadth of your warm thigh intermingled between mine,
the light that quivered through the leaves outside your window, diffused through the sheets,
when I could not possibly bother to care who knew
we were making love as the morning breeze kissed my bare skin
as softly as you.

The look of peace that now drowned your eyes,
seeping through your every pore–that was for me.

My heart was flooded…sinking, I would inevitably lose you soon. We would both walk away from that place–travel down roads we had already mapped. How could I hold on? Just a few moments longer…

–sometimes I can’t remember the smell of these flowers.
do you remember the smell of my perfume? you used to love it so much.

Formed in 2005, “nief-norf” was born from the spirited vision of Artistic Director/percussionist Andrew Bliss, who envisioned a collective of musicians, tirelessly committed to exploring, commissioning, and presenting all dimensions of contemporary music.

The nief-norf Project champions both celebrated and unknown repertoire from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and presents concerts in a variety of formats in an effort to reach the widest audiences possible. Understanding that young composers and performers are the future of our art-forms, nief-norf also strives to create opportunities for collaboration and communication through an interactive podcast and the annual nief-norf Summer Festival.

Study 4 (a & b), 2008, from the series Light and Form (untitled #) is our first collaborative project. It began as a response to a critique of our independent work given by an influential artist/critic/curator based in NYC. During separate studio visits we each received the same response: “As with most women who turn the camera on themselves, the work is overburdened with emotion.” This critique sent us on a search for our place as artists and individuals within the art world and within photographic history. What was originally a visual investigation became (untitled #) (CPW.org).

The Series Light and Form comes from the larger collaborative project from Tarrah Krajnak and Wilka Roig entitled “(untitled #)”, also including Hysteria Collection, Pose Archive, Anthology of Trends, among others. In the image that I chose to demonstrate the series, lies in the realm of contemporary photography. Each of these images as a whole are diptychs as well as self-portraits of the photographers. In these images, they pose for each other in white unitards, in varying art historical poses typical to women as the object of desire. They implement traditional techniques such as soft focus, blurred vignetting, and hand coloring of the images to further imply art historical references. The unitard serves not only to strip the individual identity away from the model, but also to take away the idea of sexual desire from the object. It is important to note, in this case, that the faces of the women are never fully seen; therefore, there is never a gaze in these images (CPW.org).

I would like to discuss how this series, as well as the duo’s work in general speaks directly to that of the photographic archive. If we look at the origins of the archive, we see that what was created was a hierarchy of social status—the creation of the other through the attempt of the creation of “one.” As Sekula referred to Foucault in The Body and the Archive, “…social power operates by virtue of a positive therapeutic or reformative channeling of the body” (p 7). How is the idea that this archive “quite literally [facilitates] the arrest of the referent” (p 7) too far divorced from the ideas that Krajnak and Roig are proposing in their theories? “This doubling [diptychs] creates a literal double-take and encourages the viewer to think twice about the conditions and the context in which the woman’s body is positioned and presented beyond the traditional aesthetics of light and form” (CPW.org). This process of photographing specific qualities or features, whether it be in early photography with African Americans or otherwise with women, leads a society to judge a person’s character or morality by the physical attributes of his or her body. It is quite empowering to note that by taking the archive into the hands of the female photographer, and by creating this satire with the forms and poses, the power is essentially channeled back to the model herself. It only makes me question whether or not the project would have been more successful if instead of focusing on the removal of the gaze, it would have been more true to that of the origins of the criminal photographic archive or early medical studies. The specificity that is inherent in phrenology could have made a very powerful statement—something that Myra Greene explored as part of her cultural heritage in her project Character Recognition where she made ambrotypes to once again question the modern day validity we give to phrenology. Due to the personalization of this, it would seem that the power they seek to reclaim would be even more eminent, and therefore more successful to the task of deconstructing gender roles in our modern society.

Bibliography

Krajnak, Tarrah, and Wilka Roig. “”Anthology of Trends” Work by Tarrah Krajnak and Wilka Roig.” The Center for Photography at Woodstock. Web. 22 Oct. 2011. <http://cpw.org&gt;.

“In today’s global society, we are continuously exposed to a multitude of cultures that bring up endless questions of identity which cause us to compete harder and harder to maintain our sense of being” (PQ, 20).

In this image, at first glance, we see what is a very clouded, black and white landscape. The image is obviously that of either multiple exposures or multiple negatives piled into one. As we navigate throughout the photograph, we see such impossibilities as there being a sky that grows out of the sky—with leading lines that pull your eye into the middle of the photograph where we seem to be in something resembling an agricultural field. When I first saw this photo, a few years ago now, my snap judgment made me think that these were bison or some other form of animal in this field (later proving Kim’s idea of the human narrative). However, even looking at the title of this image, we find that these are hay bails; even though even looking closely, it is hard for my eyes to believe it.

Through the layering of these images, Kim tries to emphasize the importance of individual circumstances and the role they play in the instability or unreliability of the formation of memory. With the specificity on both direct and indirect memory, he discusses the hazy narrative that we can form over time. “Even though I have lived in various places, after a period of time I have become unsure of specific details which are related to where those events took place yet I am aware of the when in which they occurred” (PQ, 20). I think this is an idea that we all can relate to very easily. I, for example, have lived in quite a few cities within the past six years, some for fairly short periods of time, and it is difficult to have one clear-cut memory of a place or a space in which I inhabited. I think even more so with my hometown, in which I lived for 19 years. How is that memory formed now? What parts do I chose to remember? How, in my memory, do I choose to navigate that sphere? Which parts are emphasized, where is importance given, maybe most importantly—what parts did I choose to forget? We all, in continuous retrospect, form a narrative about our lives. We are constantly editing our memory to form some grand narrative because we as humans feel the need to view our lives as having importance outside of our own temporality. “By ‘stacking’ each image, a new spectacle is created and the circumstances are compressed—this process freezes the moments I capture and intervenes with the indexes normally experienced from viewing a single vantage point” (PQ, 20). It is important what Dong Yoon Kim is doing here in his work. The ability to step outside ourselves and look back at our own learned practice is something not every person, or even artist, is willing to do. Realizing that these ideas lie within us, and not merely in the other, can be the origin of some very powerful introspective art.

At first glance into a photograph in the series Dump Sites, a viewer is not going to retain much information or understand the range of significance that permeates these photographs. Specifically, in Jane Doe- Torso Only, without even the title, the image itself appears to be a snapshot of a mid-day American landscape with its blanketing, diffuse sunlight. There is a small, stagnant stream that draws the eye from one uninteresting side of the photograph to the other, reflecting a seemingly poorly constructed footbridge and one of the few trees to fill the landscape. It is evident that this area of the landscape is rarely inhabited–no children playing in the stream, not even footprints left on its shore. The clouds signify those of a typical Midwestern late summer; possibly a storm is about to adorn the landscape, but for now, it is almost as if you can smell the static humidity in the air and listen to the nothingness of the breeze passing by.

However, this is exactly the premise the photographer was looking to establish within this content-loaded image. Dump Sitesis a series of photographs that explore the nature of the spectacle in areas where dead bodies have been found in America. Chalmers has been interested in the interrelated nature of criminology and photography throughout his work, but interestingly, he presents these works with the absence of spectacle and without much reference to the criminological nature embedded in their existence. Instead, he aims to make this work about a spiritual, subliminal experience for those affected through the use, or more so non-use of text (Chalmers). He sets up a very interesting experience by doing this that is very important to explore. Through the limited use of his text, Chalmers claims that the goal is to achieve the absence of spectacle. However, in creating images that require such interrogation and questioning, this seems to actually support and enhance the spectacle of death. Just by the sheer fact that these intimate photographs are hung in national galleries further proves that even long after these tragic events have passed, we as a people are still interested, intrigued, even fascinated by the taboos around death. While it seems that Chalmers wanted to produce a body of work that would hold a certain cult value for those personally affected by images of these landscapes, he quite literally hangs them on exhibition walls. While this body of work raises many interesting questions around that of the spectacle, the roots of photography being linked to criminology, the spiritual state of sublimity, and the artistic use of text, one really needs to wonder what his motivation was in producing such work. Did this really serve as a meditative outlet for those families affected by these tragedies? Do these families even know about Chalmers’ work? Did he make any effort to contact the families? Or is this yet another example of intriguing work without the presence of artistic integrity?

]]>https://kiradralle.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/the-single-image/feed/0kiradrallechalmers singleThe Auratic Experience of Here and Now: an analysis of the Aura of a work of art through visual and aural culturehttps://kiradralle.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/the-auratic-experience-of-here-and-now-an-analysis-of-the-aura-of-a-work-of-art-through-visual-and-aural-culture/
https://kiradralle.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/the-auratic-experience-of-here-and-now-an-analysis-of-the-aura-of-a-work-of-art-through-visual-and-aural-culture/#respondMon, 19 Dec 2011 12:24:46 +0000http://kiradralle.wordpress.com/?p=175KIRA DRALLE

Recently I was sitting in a performance of a piece called Six Marimbas by Steve Reich. I actually love this piece; conceptually and musically, it all comes together for me. Yet for some reason, I found myself wishing I were listening to the recording of it I have on iTunes. It was being performed on a concert stage that was initially set up for three or four performances that afternoon, so the six performers, each with 5-octave marimbas were crammed off to stage left, hiding in the corner. This was slightly distracting, but I tried to focus. Was this supposed to be the authentic concert experience? These little distractions led me to notice others. Lighting that could have been better, the acoustics of the room were never meant to facilitate this sort of performance; I found myself wanting to go get coffee, with no fault of the composition or the performers.
I wanted to be in that place–that mental state where time stopped, where emotions were at their peak, where art is truly experienced and not merely viewed and not just heard. This is how I define the aura of any work of art. Does it arrest time? Does it take me out of temporality and allow me to engage and be fully present with an idea or an aesthetic? So much that it transcends time and actually creates its own space? Thinkers in both the visual art realm and the aural art realm agree on one aspect–that it is essential for the aura to be present in the “here” and “now”. However, outside of that notion, what the aura is, how it is reached, and what it means in terms of experience vary greatly. After all, one’s experience is essentially perspective–we can never escape our individual histories.

Multiplicity in Definitions of the Aura

At the time of the Reich performance, I was in the process of digesting Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility. Benjamin talks about the Aura of a work of art. The definition of Aura is far from a concrete, historically agreed upon, textbook answer. However, I think few would argue that a key component to Benjamin’s definition is the idea that a piece must be Authentic in order to have an Aura. So what is it exactly he is claiming a non-authentic piece (in this case, his idea of the reproduction) is lacking?
Even in the most perfect reproduction, one thing is lacking: the here and now of
the work of art–its unique existence in a particular place. It is this unique
existence–and nothing else–that bears the mark of the history to which the work
has been subject…The here and now of the original underlies the concept of its
authenticity. 1
Given this definition of authenticity, and before we get into the differences between what and how the idea of reproducibility morphs between that of visual and aural works, we can draw the line that the “here” and the “now” are integral factors in the creation of the aura of a piece of art under Benjamin’s terms.
Another key factor in this definition is the idea of the distance between the viewer (listener) and the work of art. Benjamin states that a distance between these two must be maintained in order for the aura to be maintained. The collapse of time and space, in his view, is the collapse of the aura. This is illustrated by his example of the mountain:

The concept of the aura which was proposed above with reference to historical
objects can be usefully illustrated with reference to an aura of natural objects. We
define aura of the latter as the unique apparition of distance, however near it may
be. To follow with the eye–while resting on a summer afternoon–a mountain range
on the horizon or a branch that casts its shadow on the beholder is to breathe the
aura of the mountains, of that branch. 2

Further research into this idea of an atemporal experience of a work of art led me to a talk led by an Alaskan composer named John Luther Adams. A bit of background on Adams will inform us that he has spent most of his adult life in Alaska and has long been an environmental activist, creating musical compositions he links to the idea of “echo-location” and of a true and personal experience with nature.
In Adams’ talk, he continuously referenced the idea of creation of a space through aura using terms such as intervals, scale, tempo, speed, polyrhythms, tremolos, vibrato, luminosity, consonance, dissonance, opacity, texture, and so on.3 I could not help but see how most of these terms were in direct relation to that of an art historical context. More than anything, I wanted to understand it. I wanted to concretize it. The question that I posed to John Luther Adams was, “How do you define the term ‘aura’ in the terms of music, and how do you see, if at all, it is different from the art historical context and definition(s) of the term ‘aura’?” His answer, which was much more intricate, can be distilled down to a quote from his book Winter Music: Composing the North, where he says, “When we measure time we spatialize time.” 4
This space could be described and measured through the distance between the physicality of the score–the notes, the movements, the phrases, or we could examine this measured space in the terms Adams speaks of in the book as the physical length of the sound waves that are produced and their distance from origin to ear drum. The third way we could measure this space is vertically:
Though sound and time are materials of music, we often describe them in terms of
space. We speak of ‘high’ and ‘low’ sounds, ‘lengths’ of time, and compositional
‘forms’ and ‘structures.’ We also conceive of musical time in ‘horizontal’ and
‘vertical’ planes.5

It is in this space that Adams claims we experience the aura of a piece–in this idea of vertical space. In horizontal space, we are moving through time linearly. We are temporal beings, fully aware of the past, the present, and how they frame the future. Oppositionally, in vertical space, we become atemporal. We are stripped away of our temporal causality, as we are suspended in a space between our physical existence and the divine.
Above–between us and God–lies a “cloud of unknowing” that our understanding can
never penetrate. Between ourselves and the world, we must create a “cloud of
forgetting,” leaving conscious thought and desire below. In this timeless place of
forgetting and unknowing, we may begin to hear for that which we are listening.6

Herein lies the discontinuity between the theories of Benjamin and that of Adams. All of this illustrates the importance, the searching, the significance placed on the here and now. Artists and musicians alike have been searching for a way in which to suspend the temporality of the viewer/listener/audience in order to facilitate a fully immersed interaction with a work of art. However, they differ in that the horizontal view of Benjamin’s Aura as opposed to the mandatory criteria of the vertical element described in Adams’ aura. To Benjamin, the aura is created when there is a linear distance between A (the audience) and B (the art work). He argues that the collapse of time and space is the collapse of the aura. In Adams’ view, A (the audience) must be surrounded in a singular moment with B (the art work). The collapse of time and space becomes the space of the aura. Adams’ theory would thereby authorize its own authenticity–through the atemporal experience of a work of art–and create an entirely new definition of Aura.

TIME
A rhythm invests places, but is not itself a place; it is not a thing, nor an aggregation of things, nor yet a simple flow. It embodies its own law, its own regularity, which it derives from space–from its own space–and from a relationship between space and time.7

In Henri Lefebvre’s text, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday Life, he explores the concepts of time that are created in the work of a rhythmic piece of musical literature, and specifically, what structures are used to create or represent different effects in music.8 Adams used many terms in describing Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing that are discussed in Lefebvre’s text. On the most basic and physical level, music is measured in time through time signature, (musical) measure, and tempo. Lefebvre points out, however, that even tempos are relative time. Terms such as vivace (lively, brisk) and adagio (slowly) are not assigned a specific number value, and over time, music has trended toward acceleration.
Adams uses many techniques to represent and discuss time and its seemingly linear nature. From the onset, the piece itself is obviously a flow of linear, temporal time– that runs approximately 65 minutes from start to finish. Other aspects that are used throughout the piece include intervals, tempos, tremolos, vibrato, bowing, and most notedly, polyrhythms. These different techniques play with the tangible and flexible nature of the time created. In the visualization of intervals, the concept of a measurement is easily determined. The word interval itself is implying the distance traveled between point A and point B. The concept of tremolos and vibratos work in conjunction. The word tremulous by definition implies a shaking. I see this in a very visual manner in that the note is literally creating a time and space by rebounding off certain set boundaries. The idea of bowing, I think is most interesting in terms of the percussive aspects of a piece. With a stringed instrument, it is easy to understand the concept of elongating a note or a moment through the use of a bow. The elongation of a note on a percussive instrument has typically been viewed as a roll–many repeated notes played in fast succession in order to create the illusion of one long tone. They do, however, consist of a series of many notes. Bows have been successfully used in a lot of minimalist and post minimalist music on percussive instruments. So once where we had a note (moment) repeated to create the illusion of one, we now simply have one moment (note) drawn out in time and space.
The most interesting notion within this piece, however, is that within his creation of a linear time, the goal is to actually transcend it. How is it possible that the very creation of a work of art works in direct opposition to what it aims to accomplish? The goal of this piece is to arrest linear, horizontal time, and yet it is through this writing of horizontal, linear, musical time that we create the foundation to transcend it into vertical time.

SPACE

When we measure time, we spacialize time.9

Adams speaks of an experience he had with a painter and the painter’s work. They were looking at images taken in the Antarctic, and Adams was trying to distinguish why one of the images was much more powerful visually and aesthetically to him. One of the images seemed much more vast, expansive, even though both of the images were taken with the same camera, same lens, same focal length. It became obvious to him that the only distinction between the two images was that the one had a small reference to the foreground, and it was almost as if it was laying a ruler within the composition–grounding the viewer in a literal world.
In Western music melody and harmony are the equivalents of figure and ground.
Together they constitute a kind of musical perspective, which evolved parallel to
that of Renaissance painting. In the musical textures of ‘Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds
of Unknowing,” I wanted to lose musical perspective, to blend line and chord into a
single sphere of musical space.10
He claimed it defined a definite space, whereas if a viewer were to exist in the Antarctic landscape, the scale would be incomprehensible. “This painting is so powerful because it creates a presence that demands our participation. It requires us to explore and discover for ourselves an imaginary space grounded in a remarkable natural landscape. I aspire to a similar experience in music.” 11
A key component for this creation of an imagined space is the loss of perspective. Adams is blending the line and chord within his composition with the intent of blurring that distinct line between “foreground” and “background” so that the audience loses their firm sense of grounding in the real world. By taking small groups of short, melodic cells and laying them on top of long harmonic tones, Adams creates polyrhythmic phrasing that blurs our sense of metronomic time. “Figure becomes ground in dense clouds of expanding, rising lines. Ground becomes figure in the glacial movement of large harmonic clouds.”13

…

PLACE

Adams states his definition of place very succinctly.
Space is the distance we travel between here and there. The space we inhabit is ‘place’.
Through patience and deep attention to where we are, we transform empty space into
living space.15
In a Marxist view, however, such with Henri Lefebvre, this term takes on a completely different meaning. In this sense, the term “place” is now tied to social interactions in a capitalist society. It would argue that it is much more beneficial to adopt Adams’ use of place to discuss the arts. Whereas the space of a gallery or a concert hall is a highly social space, it does not solely exist in a capitalist realm.
In looking at Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing and the other works of John Luther Adams, it is evident that he values his personal interaction with nature, specifically the natural landscape of Alaska, as his interaction and inhabitation in place. He is very closely tied to his interaction in the Alaskan landscape. This, however, poses a problem. Never does he claim that his compositions create place- that is through lived interaction with a place. This speaks most directly to the issues surrounding both aural and visual arts around representation.
If a piece of work creates a separate, reflective state of space, and yet we do not have the time or capacity with which to connect, how is an audience, then, able to inhabit this place? It makes the entire work of art itself a representation of a lived (and personal) experience with nature. So can the audience ever, in fact, transcend to this space between forgetting and unknowing? In my opinion, they cannot. John Luther Adams can only represent that of which he has lived, and the audience comes to the concert hall with their own personal, limited experiences, viewpoints, histories. Does this, however, negate the value of the work of art? I would argue that it does not. Maybe there could be issues around the originality and authenticity of the work, but that is not where I would assign value. It engages the audience, and ultimately, a discourse is created around all of the issues that are raised. The work becomes conceptual, and no–that is not a bad thing. To me, the work is conceptual as well as technically and mechanically brilliant. It is not, however, transcendental.

Authenticity

Is there, or can there ever be, a transcendental nature to a piece of art–musical, visual, or otherwise? Mechanically and symbolically, Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing does all that it should do in creating a disjunctured sense of time through the use of polyrhythms and tremolos. And yet is that enough? How is “transcendental” defined in the art world? While many people love and respect the work of Mark Rothko, has anyone (who is honest with themselves) ever felt transcended by Orange and Yellow? Or is all of this just an obsession to be included in this super secret cult of the art world? Well, maybe if we look at it in a slightly less loaded way. I have had one experience with a work of art that really stopped me in my tracks, and it is far from any minimalist or abstract expressionist work.
I was in San Diego at the Museum of Photographic Arts. There was a show up consisting of classic photography, most of whom being from the f-64 group. The photo was not large in scale–it did not completely envelop a viewer–and the content of the image was simple. By no conventional means should it have taken me out of a causal, linear temporality. It was Ruth Bernhard’s Two Leaves:

16

Maybe I am channeling Benjamin when I say, trust me, this representation does not do the photograph justice. It was an image I had seen many times before, all reproductions in books and online, but nothing could compare to the incredible talent that producing this silver gelatin print required. I do not think, however, that this is the idea Benjamin was talking about in his essay. Benjamin was talking about something intangible that was the difference between an original work of art and a reproduction. In his eyes, a photograph itself must always be a reproduction anyway, seeing that the same photograph can be reproduced infinitely by the same negative. However, what I am arguing is that it did not matter that it was a photograph, or it could have been #24 in an edition of 25. I am saying that the skill involved when Ruth Bernhard developed that print was vastly superior to any printing press that would reproduce it in a book. The exposure, the contrast, the toning–everything was gorgeous. I, as a photographer, knew how much attention to detail had to go into the making of that print. I knew how hard it was to achieve such a tone and luminosity. I knew how many chemicals she had to inhale through developing the negative, developing the print, doing the sepia tone and then the selenium tone. I knew how many hours locked in a darkroom with a tiny red light must have gone into making the perfect print. And even though this image is a small, simply-lit photograph of two leaves, the beauty overwhelmed me. I have never before, and not yet since, experienced a work of art that abbreviated time like that for me.
Did I have that experience with Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing? No, I did not. It definitely does not mean that I do not respect the piece for its concept. Technically, it is a highly intellectual and thought provoking. Maybe this is where there is a disjuncture between the aural and visual arts. It is obvious that there is an overlap, but I believe certain people are wired more visually and others more aurally, so we understand, interpret, and represent concepts in very different ways. I was a musician from the time I was eight taking piano lessons throughout high school and into college, but I never learned well by wrote. It was important to me to be able to see the notes on the page. Conceptually, I see the space; I experience the space. But do I feel the space, and isn’t that the premise of the aura? So is this space really created? In Adams’ terms, and with my experience, no. Time itself was not transcended, my horizontal time was not augmented. There still existed the tangible world around me. There was still coughing from the audience, the rustling of programs. The world still existed within the walls of the concert hall.
Words are in space, yet not in space. They speak of space, and enclose it. A
discourse on space implies a truth of space, and this must derive not from a
location within space, but rather from a place imaginary and real–hence ‘surreal’,
yet concrete. And, yes–conceptual also. 17
What does this, then, say about the nature of authenticity within the constraints of the aura? Does a piece require an aura in order to be authentic? Is an aura only conceptual and therefore experienced on a personal, intellectual basis? Could this work be perceived as authentic and not auratic? Or auratic and not authentic? Benjamin claims that the here and now of the original is the root of authenticity.18 Yet translated into musical terms, the original does not hold the same definition of the original work of visual art. It could be said that the original score would be the original work, but that is barely relevant anymore because of the fact that most musical scores are not even hand written, and also in that what we could most similarly talk about is a performance of a score. When we get into the ideas of performance, however, we are strictly speaking of an interpretation of a work of art. Each performance will vary slightly, or maybe even drastically depending on the nature of the genre of music, from one another. Performers in music, generally speaking, are interpreters. This is why it becomes significant when the composer of a piece works with those performing it–because the outcome of the performance will be most like what the composer intended when the piece was written.
Consequently, the discourse around authenticity in music mainly has been centered around recordings of performances. Recently, I was researching John Cage, and an amazing discourse developed around the idea of authenticity in regards to his piece, 4’33”. This is what the score looks like:

19
Literally, all performers are Tacet (Latin, meaning silent) for the duration of the piece. Performers walk on stage with their instruments, take their seats, sit in silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, get up, bow, and exit the stage. The idea of this piece is that music is everything. It can be any one thing you hear, from noises within the concert hall, to cars driving outside.
This idea is fairly basic until we add in the ingredient of iTunes. In a search for John Cage music, I found that 4’33” can be purchased on iTunes for 99 cents. Literally, a track of silence for the duration of 4’33” can be purchased on iTunes. It is apparently necessary to spend 99 cents in order to stop and listen to the noises in the comfort of your own home. An interesting fact in itself, but this now raises the idea of our obsession with authenticity and the original. Sure, some people out there have paid 99 cents for a silent track of 4’33”, but it’s a John Cage! Why is there such a need for the original? This is not even an original; we are not sitting in a concert hall, there are no performers– there is literally no connection to the hand of the artist. There is just a name put on a digital file that happens to be 4’ and 33” long.
I am still going to argue that there is value in this mp3 version of 4’33”, in the fact that it creates dialogue. People still talk about this piece, it is still debated. Is that not an essence in itself? For me, that is hugely essential as a credential of value in works of art. This might go against what Benjamin argues–that the exhibition value of work, when it is spread through the masses, takes away the essence of the aura. And in a way it might. It could be my repulsion with the fact that 4’33” is on iTunes, but it sets up a whole new value system that applies an entirely different use value to the art. Discussion and engagement replace our obsession with the Original.
I started this paper with the intent of arguing that, while overlapping, aural and visual connotations of the word “aura” are very different. This on a broader scale would symbolize the inherent interconnected, and yet essentially different, nature between the two. Seventeen pages of arguing with myself later, it would seem that they are two languages (ironically, traditionally both named “universal”) that are basically telling the same story. I may not believe in the idea that a work of art of any medium actually produces a transcendental experience, but I highly value the fact that they try. Ideas and issues arise over originality and authenticity, but ultimately, that does not matter. I believe in viewing a work of art, and valuing a work of art for exactly what it is–a representation–a concept. And concepts create discourse. Concepts create engagement and interaction; concepts fuel further concepts. No matter what language is spoken, that is the aura of a work of art.

We should not, for a moment, underestimate or neglect the importance of the act of imaginative rediscovery which this conception of a rediscovered, essential identity entails. ‘Hidden histories’ have played a critical role in the emergence of many of the most important social movements of our time– feminist, anti-colonial and anti-racist. The photographic work of a generation of Jamaican and Rastafarian artists…is a testimony to the continuing creative power of this conception of identity within the emerging practices of representation. Francis’ photographs of the peoples of The Black Triangle, taken in Africa, the Caribbean, the USA and the UK, attempt to reconstruct in visual terms ‘the underlying unity of the black people whom colonization and slavery distributed across the African diaspora[1]

Photographs have been used in multiple genres and movements as a tool by which we identify an underlying unity—specifically in visual terms. We define our lives by all of the photos we do and do not take. This has been a topic I have been debating internally for quite some time. There are so many ways in each of our contemporary lives that we can view the tangible nature of our constant editing. All I have to do is look at my cell phone, and I can see the archive of my life–how I have meticulously edited the images that define my past year. Facebook is an archive of photos that has been filtered through yet another visual edit of our lives. How do I want to be seen? How do I want to depict myself? I am emphasizing meaning on the things I deem important and minimizing, or maybe not showing at all, the things I chose to forget. This is all done in the construction of the “image” we want to portray.

Recently, my family discovered a massive archive of Kodachrome slides my great uncle had accumulated throughout his life; photos of family, photos of trips back to his homeland of Denmark and neighboring Scandinavian countries, photos of time spent here in San Francisco. I never knew about the time he spent here, and it almost applied a retrospective meaning as to why I am where I am. Of course, this is all my narrative. This is choosing facts that I see to be pertinent and applying them for the purposes I want. It is almost as if there were some thread that ran through our family that would predispose me to be attracted to the Bay.

The ideas of human narrative, construction of realities, and imagined communities is tied so closely to the tangible, visible nature of the photograph. These ideas are truthful in their physical evidence, yet they are also constructed. Through photography we visually edit, narrate, and interpret a story.

The discovery of these images has had a large impact on my family and their own personal narratives of our heritage and histories, but certain aspects of this work speak to me much more directly because of the fact that I am a photographer. Ideas surrounding myth versus reality, the non-use of text in the archive, and the time-suspending arrest they create, gives me an incredible insight as to who my great uncle Robert McCune was and how he functioned. This being, of course, just my narrative.

Myth and Reality

Individuals without an anchor, without horizon, colourless, stateless,

In The Rhetoric of the Image, Barthes first puts forth the idea that the photograph is a copy. The word image is derived from the root imitari, meaning copy. Thus, the photograph is merely a representation of reality, falling short of the lived experience.[3] Sontag describes this action as the “recycling of reality”[4]. So where do we find the meaning in an image? Even though an image is far from “Truth”, a photograph implies at least a presence in temporal reality due to the fact that it is a photograph. It is not a painting; it was not created by the hand of a man or woman. It does, however, retain the ability to be manipulated by the eye and the hand of the photographer through light, lens, perspective, chemistry, post-editing, etc. Therefore, a photograph can neither be a complete accurate account of the truth, nor can it be a complete myth. It is in fact, a representation of reality, an editing of facts, an emphasis on specific aspects of knowledge over others.

Richard Avedon is an example of a photographer who literally creates the meaning of a photograph through portraiture. Avedon enjoys photographing people the first time he meets them. He claims that he comes to “know” their personality, and understands their relationship, through the portraits he makes. Sontag points out the fact that photographers are self-contradictory in describing their medium. I agree with her statement that “the portrait I do best is of the person I know best”[5], but it is interesting to consider the fact that one of the most famous portrait photographers of our time thinks in a reverse manner.

I cannot say that I know exactly where this photo of a harbor was taken, or even exactly when it was taken. What interests me the most is why he took the image, standing there, viewing the scene from that perspective, at that time of day. I wonder if he realized his compositional choices. I wonder if he knew where the leading lines intersected or how the eye is naturally drawn through the image. Did he see the world as I do? Did he have an eye for the arts? Was he aware of horizon? Of balance? Color balance? Did this image stop him in his tracks? Was he walking to lunch with his camera in his backpack, or was he out specifically to shoot? It amazes me because it looks like exactly a photo I would take. Maybe I inherited his artistic vision.

Use of the Linguistic

Another idea that this brings up is that of the use of the linguistic with an image or a series of images. Text can be included as caption, as a title, as an artist statement, or otherwise. The debate in an art historical context is that of if a photograph requires text in order to stand as a strong photograph. If text is included with an image or set of images, does it enhance the experience or hinder the visual experience? Good or bad, the inherent meaning of a photograph changes once text is included. In this case text was not included at all on the slides. This leads me to wonder if they were ever intended to be viewed by anyone other than himself. They were not found in albums or in protective sleeves; they were found in carousels left inside of boxes, in a basement. With the fact that he did not use any text to explain the photographs—not even dates—and the fact that they were not preserved in a manner that would imply presentation, did he ever expect or intend for these to be viewed? Or was this simply and strictly a personal experience for him?

It would appear, and knowing what little I do about him, that he wanted the images to remain on a mostly private level. He was not trying to create a time capsule; he had no children for whom he needed to bestow his culture or heritage or legacy. Yet this goes against Sontag’s claim to one of the major roles of the photographic medium—visibility. “No one would dispute that photography gave a tremendous boost to the cognitive claims of sight…–it so greatly enlarged the realm of the visible.”[6]

This goes back to the ideas of denotative and connotative meaning that Barthes describes.[7] Ultimately, one would say that the role of text would be to assist in producing connotative meaning within an image that can not reach that level on its own—an image that requires a story, that cannot hold the same meaning if it is viewed as purely visual. But what is the significance, what is the meaning, what is the intent of the photographer and of the work when connotative meaning is not visualized nor is it given through the use of text?

This is yet just another void left in this work, that I will naturally fill in with ideas of what I think was his purpose and intent. The only explanation that I can come up with is that he did not view these images as images he would ever show to a public of any kind. We all, as artists, have or have had that body of work we need to create for ourselves, not for an audience. But was this a self-inflective work? It seems to me that this work is simply that of travel photography, in which case, there would be no reason to not label it and keep it hidden away in boxes. But all of the signs point to the idea that these images were used as a personal mirror; a reflection, introspection on his life of solitude.

It is interesting to note, however, that all of these images place a physical barrier between Robert McCune and the rest of the scene—whether it be water, the empty space of the dock, or space on the street between him and those passing by. While this might imply a detachment from the viewer, it is imperative to note that with the nature of a photograph, we, the audience, are placed in his shoes, so to speak—thus implying an interconnected nature or even sameness between the viewer and Robert himself. This innately would give license to personal interpretation of intent, to my personal narrative of his experience and its connected nature to my life.

Arrest…Such photographs, they might go on to say, are printed on the black curtain which is drawn across what we choose to forget or refuse to know…They bring us up short. The most literal adjective that could be applied to them is arresting.[8]

John Berger discusses the idea of arrest in his article Photographs of Agony. In such a case, we are arrested by the violence and atrocities existing in the work. However, we are left in a state in which we are unable to act, hereby forcing us to confront our own lack of political freedom. This act interrupts time, and as Berger says it, “[t]hey bring us up short.” [9]

Aside from viewing the concept of arrest in photographs of agony, it can quite literally be viewed in any photograph that which we did not experience in real time. And yet we feel some connection with these images—whether it be in the ideologies and morality in viewing photographs of terror and agony, or whether it be in the cultural ties and heritage with which we feel interconnected in photos such as these.

We try to emerge from the moment of the photograph back into our lives. As we do so, the contrast is such that the resumption of our lives appears to be a hopelessly inadequate response to what we have just seen. [10]

This speaks directly to a historical account of our family histories. We feel a tie to the past, a connection with the photographer—with a bridge of time and space between the artist and the viewer, bound by an invisible thread.

Did my uncle have a grand narrative? Does that even matter? Maybe he had a story, but without the words to interpret it. These photographs act as facts—they hold a sense of truth in their tangible nature. Yet aside from that physicality, there is nothing that grounds them in one specific interpretation. This archive acts as many other archives of the past; they construct unity through the visual. Through the archive, I can construct a narrative on the meaning as to why I am in San Francisco. I can apply meaning to seemingly mundane facts of my own life. I can connect with a family history and root myself within that history. I know, for example, that he and I speak in a very similar visual language. Maybe it was just luck or chance that brought me to the same places he once explored with his camera. Most likely, my own personal account of this collection of work will change over time. But this lifeline, this invisible thread ties our lives together. Maybe I just need to live with these images, process these images, revisit them on occasion; and as with most stories, the words will come, the dots will connect, when I look back.

Bibliography

Barthes, Roland. “Rhetoric of the Image (1977),” in Classic Essays on Photography, 269-270.

This is a site a group of MA and MFA students at SFAI worked on this semester, dealing with the multiple concepts of creativity theory. This is the abstract–enjoy the work from these talented San Francisco artists.

KIRA DRALLE

After an entire semester spent studying the concept(s) of creativity, are we any closer to understanding what it is, where it comes from, or how to harness it and use it? It seems as if as soon as we approach an understanding, it slips away. Creativity is such a malleable and elusive concept.

In each of our projects this semester, we tried to approach an aspect of creativity and explore it. Where did our societal context of creativity even come from? Do we possess creative genius or are we visited by genius? The weight of being expected to be creative can be crippling. What would happen to your art if that weight was taken away? If you possessed the freedom to fail, would your art be truer to your thoughts? This would then imply that if we do not feel we are particularly creative at a given point in time, creativity is a trait that could be acquired and refined.

After we have established a context in which we can be creative, how do we create the physical space in which our creativity can flourish? Many of us explored the ideas around how we prepare as part of our creative process. What senses do we have to engage in order to start the creative process? Some of us are highly in tune with our sense of smell, others with taste or hearing. Senses have a huge impact on our mindset, on our culture, on how we bond with those around us to create a sense of community.

Along the way, we encountered many questions. How do we function creatively within the constrains of our systems? What constraints do we have personally, socially, culturally? How can we overcome mental blocks? We all grappled with these problems; whether directly in our content or indirectly through our work. Ultimately, how can we get to (and, more importantly, stay in) that state where divergent thinking comes easily, where we can be exploratory and spontaneous with our ideas and with our art?

I don’t think any of us have that answer. (Sorry.) But we can leave you with a little advice: Listen to your inner dialog; it’s going to tell you a lot about yourself and your work. Listen to it when it tells you to do what you love. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you that you are most open, most in tune, most aware, and most present when you are doing something that you honestly (honestly) enjoy. We all approached this topic of “Creativity” in vastly different ways, and it has shown us that we all understand the world in very different ways. So go do what you do. And explore. Oh, and as hard as it seems, be willing to fail (every once in a while).